The Bloomberg news agency is reporting that it has appointed financial advisers to identify potential interested parties. The agency reports that the company could raise $500 million to $1 billion (€435-€870 million), depending on the extent of the sale.
The news comes four months after the group raised €379 million by selling an almost 10% share in Telxius, its towers and subsea subsidiary, to a real-estate company – valuing the whole of Telxius at about €3.7 billion.
In 2016 Telefónica called off a plan for a public share sale in Telxius that would have raised a target €1.2 billion, but in 2017 it did sell a 40% stake in the unit to KKR for about €1.2 billion. It has still not floated shares in its UK operation, O2, despite plans to do so in 2017.
Meanwhile Telefónica reported last month that it has managed to reduce its debt by 10% year on year, though revenues for the third quarter of 2018 were down 8.3% on the same period of 2017. Profits, however, were 35.8% up for the quarter, to €1.14 billion.
Bloomberg cited unidentified “people with knowledge of the matter” saying that Telefónica’s strategic review is “in early stages”.
The group has data centres in Spain, Latin America and the US, and earlier this year it began a partnership with Nokia’s Nuage Networks to transform the infrastructure for its Spanish data centres.
